


honorifics

by carained



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 06:58:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10238480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carained/pseuds/carained
Summary: Magnus looks between the three boys and the dog he already loves that’s being hurt by them. His temper flares in an unfamiliar way and his fists curl by his sides.His name is Magnus Burnsides, and he knows what he has to do.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemonadelaughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonadelaughter/gifts).



> happy (semi late) birthday, buddy. i love you so much and am so, _so_ proud of you. i'm incredibly blessed to have a friend as kind, talented, beautiful, and hilarious as you are. best of luck in absolutely crushing it this year.

There’s a dog. 

It’s a stray, judging by the mud coating its paws and the way it startles when people approach it. It’s slinking more than walking, looking for scraps and a place to rest. Magnus realizes that it’s afraid. He realizes there’s probably a reason for that, and he’s sad, but over and above that, he’s angry. He’s still watching when the dog finds an alleyway to curl up in. Magnus takes a couple of steps closer, his pockets jangling, and stops in his tracks when the dog looks up sharply. He remembers the three coins in his pocket, and how he had originally set out to buy a bag of candy, small spun globes of sugar that crunched and shattered if you bit them but slowly melted if you were patient. 

He walks away from the dog—slowly, as to not to scare it more—and into a shop. He stands as tall as he can and stretches to put his coins on the counter above the display of foods. He’s tall for his age, but he’s still only ten. He points at what he wants, and there’s a clink as the man working there sweeps the coins into his hand, and, a minute later, a rustle of a bag as he hands it down to Magnus. He thanks the man and runs back out into the street, the bag crinkling at his side as he walks towards the alley. 

He’s glad when the dog is still there. He’s more glad that it doesn’t run away when he crouches ten feet away, and he smiles when he pulls out his purchase—two sausages—and dumps it on the ground. When the dog just looks at him, he nudges the meat closer with his foot, and the dog scrambles up and wolfs them down. The dog lets him get closer, after that, and Magnus spends the better part of that afternoon petting it and deciding on a name. He decides the dog is named Adam. He decides the dog is his. After he makes these two decisions, the most important ones in his entire ten year old life, he realizes he should probably inform his parents of this. 

Adam follows Magnus as he walks home, and Magnus is delighted. He makes all sorts of promises and Adam wags his tail at all of them. When they reach his home, Magnus crouches in front of Adam. 

“Stay here. You can come in in a minute, I just have to make sure it’s okay first. It will be, I just gotta check.”

Adam lays at his feet, and Magnus bursts with pride because of how smart his dog is. He runs inside to find his mother, and although she sounds slightly bewildered, she tells him yes, he can keep the dog. He’s grinning wide and toothy when he runs out to relay the good news to Adam, but it falls a bit when he sees three boys slightly older than him surrounding him.

“Hey—I know he’s a cool dog, but he gets kinda scared around people, so you should give him some space.”

One of the boys—this one’s blond—turns to look at Magnus. 

“Why?”

Magnus blinks. He just told them why. 

“Because it scares him.”

The blond kid kicks Adam, who whimpers and folds into himself.

“So?”

Magnus looks between the three boys and the dog he already loves that’s being hurt by them. His temper flares in an unfamiliar way and his fists curl by his sides. 

His name is Magnus Burnsides, and he knows what he has to do. 

It gets as close to a full fledged fight as it can get when they’re all children. He comes out of it badly, especially in comparison to the three other boys. He aches. He lays on the ground and hears the other kids back off and run away, feels his heart sink when Adam licks his face once before slinking off. He comes out of it with an arm that gets put in a cast for a month and principles that shape him in a permanent way. 

—

Magnus has always enjoyed working with his hands, always felt a particular draw to working a piece of wood into something either functional or a certain type of beautiful. Throughout the years, he's gotten a lot less clumsy and a lot more precise. He's good. Good enough to manage an apprenticeship with Steven Waxman, who Magnus has admired for ages and still idolizes, just a bit. He walks into Steven’s shop—not for the first time, but for the first time as Magnus Burnsides, apprentice—and doesn't see Steven. There's a girl behind the counter, though, who smiles at him brightly. 

“You're Magnus.”

She's not asking. 

He nods, and she gestures towards another door, different from the one he came in. 

“My dad—Steven—is out back. You can go on out there if you’d like. He’s waiting for you.”

She sticks out a hand. She has a smile unlike any Magnus has ever seen, one that’s making his heart twinge in an unfamiliar way. He belatedly realizes that she’s beautiful, the most beautiful person he's ever seen, and he chokes on his words. She nods down at her hand, and he grasps it. Shakes it. She has a good grip, he notes, before they both pull away.

“Julia.”

“Magnus.”

She laughs, looks the slightest bit bemused.

“I know.”

He stutters out something that’s meant to be an explanation or an apology—he’s not sure which—and she interrupts him.

“It’s fine. I get it. You’re nervous.”

She nods towards the door.

“Go meet him.”

Her name is Julia Waxman, and he’s going to fall in love with her. 

—

It happens over the course of months. Magnus talks to her as often as he can, and Julia teases him and calls him Maggie. They go on a date. Then they go on several. Magnus proposes and she says yes, but. Caelin.

Neither of them feel like it’s the right time to get married with the town the way it is. “After this is over,” they both say, unsure of when that’ll even be. But the day does come when Caelin is ousted and things improve. Ravensroost is more peaceful than Magnus has ever known it, after the rebellion. People are happier. They smile more. It seems like the air itself is different, lighter and sweeter and easier to breathe. The entire town eases into a new, better, normal. The Hammer and Tongs is bustling. Magnus is ecstatic, and so is Julia. It's after one of these days, the better days, when Magnus asks if she still wants to get married and she laughs and asks if he's free next Saturday. 

It's a smaller ceremony, Magnus and Julia and Steven and a handful of friends. Magnus cries and Julia kisses his ring and smiles at him. 

Her name is Julia Burnsides, and she’s in love with him.

—

Magnus leaves for a woodworking competition, proud of himself for qualifying, proud to represent himself and Steven and Julia. He hugs Steven goodbye and tells Julia he loves her. He doesn't know it's the last time he’ll see either of them, has no idea what's going to befall his home. He comes back to a ghost town filled with stragglers, people who want to get the hell out of Dodge but are getting their affairs together first. He gets sympathetic looks from most people, explanations from others. He finds out Steven and Julia were in the initial hit. He finds out that efforts to recover bodies fell by the wayside in the panic and massive exodus. He is, by no small measure, wrecked. 

Her name is Julia Burnsides, and she’s gone. 

—

Time passes. Magnus keeps mourning, but learns how to compartmentalize. How to delegate the hurt to a corner of his mind so it's something he can talk about without shutting down. He gets handier with a sword and shield. He answers an ad on Craigslist. He meets Merle and Taako, he learns to love Merle and Taako, he fights a countless number of… well, everything with Merle and Taako. And then they’re just done. The relics are destroyed, they’re all out of a job. 

They spend a week relishing the feeling that the world isn’t going to end anytime soon, and then Taako gets bored. He goes as far as letting out a strangled scream before he starts throwing things into a bag muttering about how he wants to do something, come on. Merle stares blankly at him, taking an obnoxiously loud sip from some over the top alcoholic drink, complete with umbrella and straw. Magnus silently nurses his suspicion that there's something cultivating Taako into flightiness—into staying on the run—but he just hugs him and asks to keep in touch. Sometimes you can't ask people to stay. Sometimes you can just make sure you're there when they go and let them know you'll be around if they come back. Merle spends the entire time Taako’s packing saying things like good riddance in a particular tone, but when Taako’s done, when he's actually leaving, Merle gets teary and throws his arms around him. Taako oofs and tells him to be careful where he throws that hunk of wood and Merle just keeps holding him. 

“You were like my… my….” 

“Like your patient that sues you for malpractice and becomes a millionaire.”

Merle politely ignores that (or maybe he doesn't, because Taako winces as Merle tightens his hold).

“I’ll always remember you, Taako.”

That's when Taako extricates himself from the scenario, wriggling until Merle lets him go. 

“I mean, yeah. I'm Taako. Literally everything about me is unforgettable and amazing.”

He leaves, and then it's just Magnus and Merle. Merle never seems to get hit with the antsyness that Taako did, content to eat and drink and read and say “I’m retired” anytime he gets asked to do something. 

Magnus makes it a month before he starts getting twitchy. He starts carving again, puts himself through the motions until it comes naturally to his hands. He travels to a nearby town and buys an empty lot and a ton of lumber. Building a house, it turns out, is hard, and it takes a lot of time, but it's his. It's a home. He builds it, he furnishes it, he loves it. 

He gets a dog and names him Adam. He makes friends with his neighbors and the people who live across town and visiting merchants. He loves living in his small home with his big dog. He loves the letters he gets every once in awhile from Merle (and eventually, Merle and his children), and he likes when Taako shows up on his doorstep and proclaims he’s staying for a few days, nothing you can do about it, big guy. Magnus always hugs him. As the years and decades go by, Taako always makes a remark about how quickly humans get old and then follows it up by saying Magnus could really make the silver fox thing work if he let Taako work some magic—not actual magic, Taako being fucking amazing at personal grooming magic—with his hair. He always declines, and Taako always shrugs and says “Your loss” before going on to critique his kitchen and make a week’s worth of meals. Most of the time, Magnus carves things. He gives away a lot of them, to neighbors, to kids, to the local school and church. He watches his friends’ children grow up, fall in love. Uncle Magnus becomes a staple in most townspeople’s life events. He goes to funerals and weddings and shows up a week after a baby’s been born to hand over a small wooden toy. He always has a dog. It’s… nice. It’s not the sort of life he expected, after everything, but it's nice. 

When he dies, it’s not dramatic. It’s his body simply hitting its limits after several dozen years of wear and tear from fights and, well, life. He goes to bed and that’s that.

He’s never adhered to any religion in particular, believing in the vague promises of a creator and afterlife without any specific god attached to them. He doesn't see a light, exactly, but he's aware that things are not quite real, not quite right. He sees a figure in the distance, shadowy and undefined, and walks towards it. He doesn't really have any other options. As he gets closer, the figure becomes recognizable as woman, the woman recognizable as Julia. His heart swells. 

His name is Magnus Burnsides, and he’s at peace.


End file.
